One of Edmonton’s most inviting events is set to go Saturday as the sixth annual Strathearn Art Walk hits (you got it) Strathearn Drive between 89 Street and 91 Street, now bigger than ever.

A new stage will buoy up musicians Katie and the Wildfire, Bleached Rag, the Den, Dave Jackson, Stovetop and Mbira Renaissance Band during the noon to 7 p.m. event, as more than 220 artists show off their talent — another chance to get a jump on your holiday shopping for the non-Minimalists out there.

It’s the biggest yet — and besides food, there’s also a beer and wine garden. (Although it’s just east up the hill from folk fest, hopefully no lineups, eh?)

Local artist Jared Robinson will bring his unfinished mural of bison in a wheat field to the event, which he’s asking the walk’s patrons to help him finish as part of Mustard Seed’s Open Door Program, which provides accompaniment, accountability and support to women and men leaving Canada’s prison system and resettling in the Edmonton area.

“I have part of it left to be painted,” the artist explains. “The public can step up and paint a little bit of it, and I’ll do some touch-ups.”

The mural, which will be installed in Mustard Seed’s resource and welcome centre, features a quote by storyteller Brené Brown: “Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”

The event is free and all are welcome to come enjoy the great view. Afterwards, it’s a quick walk down to Accidental Beach on the river if you haven’t hit it yet. Just hop over to Cloverdale Road to the west, head south and cross 98 Avenue north of 92 Street.

Having chilled there four times now, I’m still stunned at how well this social experiment is going, down to the steps being carved in the sand by good Samaritans, and the range of people of every stripe is magnificent.

Winter is coming, then spring’s high waters — so don’t miss this gift worth 100 arenas.

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Quick reminder that Saturday is Latitude 53’s final Summer Series party — Homecoming, running from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Billed as a freshman dance and alumni reunion, DJs from SweetiePie Records and Double Lunch Productions will be spinning the deep cuts under a winking disco ball as the gallery celebrates what it stands for — a long history of cutting edge work open to those hoping to enter the art community, and those hoping to return.

This one sounds like fun, echoing the legendary patio parties of yore, which Latitude 53 really kicked off in the modern age around here. Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door, and you can get either at 10242 106 St. where the party’s going down.

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This is my own failing, but I finally got to see the amazing mural Mallorca, Spain’s Xena — Fatima de Juan — did for Rust Magic Mural Fest this year on the side of the old Army & Navy (10305 97 St.), and is it great, all witchy in a classic arcade style.

See for yourself … admission is free, haha.

Fatima de Juan’s work for Rust Magic on the side of the old Army & Navy downtown. Fish GriwkowskyFish Griwkowsky /
Postmedia

Monday I Facebook-posted what follows under the headline An Invitation to Love after watching the final episode of Twin Peaks: The Return aired Sunday, but in case you missed it and are interested …

*** SUPER-MAJOR TWIN PEAKS SPOILERS BELOW ***

And so the 27-year-old piece of art comes to a screaming end, leaving many yelling on the internet “what the f— happened?” — which to me is entirely the point.

It all happened/none of it happened.

Creators David Lynch and Mark Frost Mulholland-Drived it: Simultaneous contradictory truths, where the closer you get to the reality of a neatly-mowed lawn, the more dandelions pop up on the other side of the yard.

Was, for instance, the Judy-waitress, final Laura — now Carrie Page — raped in that house down the lane as a kid and ran away, having “killed” her past as Laura Palmer and invented/dreamed everything we know and love of Twin Peaks?

Lynch loves Wizard of Oz, so curtains get pulled all the time.

But if so, I think he successfully made it that the surreal dream of the three series is more real to us than the show’s final, gritty “reality,” a trick he’s been trying to master his entire career.

For this is his Dark Tower, full of signposts: The driving in the dark of Lost Highway. The terrifying procreation of the former Blue Velvet teens. Multiple lives of the same people, like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. A creepy creature with an eraser head. It’s all the same underground river in the night, where the man with no eyebrows hands you the phone and on the other end of the line he’s also in your house.

I’m still reeling from the familiar ugliness of the “reality” world at the end of the finale, filmed with no style or magic — just dark, cop show procedural camerawork à la True Detective of Sea-Can storage containers, potholed tarmac and seagulls chattering away in the background.

And yet, in this world, Cooper somehow feels the least believable, aiming his gun at the innocent; ignoring the dead man in the waitress’ house — he’s Coop, Mr. C and Dougie all at once, yet more beige than any of them, singularly fixed on waking up Laura’s memories.

But did he or his motivations feel “real?” The answer is not so much, which is maybe partly why the internet is screaming — because it shifts the focus.

Seen as some final “answer,” it reframes the entire story as Laura’s — if you like. But it’s also an escape hatch.

Put another way, pick whichever version you want to be real … but amid all the backwards talk of electricity and teens staring at a giant black box which destroys them, none of it is real, nor was it ever. Which just happens to be true.

Except, of course, in our subconscious, as art, as fiction.

Lynch and Mark Frost have most impressively turned their TV and film into music, where there’s no answer.

That’s a tough burden for what’s supposed to be escapism, and that’s not going to satisfy a lot of people — many of whom dropped off after the show’s initial mystery was confronted with a soggy Leland Palmer sobbing in his cell.

But it’s one of my favourite things about art, where even the artist loses control of their intention, where the main life of the work lives on in inaccurately-recalled details in conversations long afterward, stretching ever away from their source.

And in a world where Capt. Kirk has both brown and now blue eyes; where dozens of the same Batman have been punching the same mental patients since 1939; where the humans ARE the cylons; where Jon Snow may or may not be alive in the books; where there will probably still be more Dukes of Hazzard films, adjusted into acceptability for the politics of their times, I love that Lynch took on the idea of infinity so directly.

Waitress Carrie Page isn’t just another doppelgänger; her entire world is. It’s all a dream, always was.

Where Star Wars gave so many of us godless heathens a sense of common religion and ever-quoted dogma, Twin Peaks suddenly has us churning with philosophical and existential debate — what does it all meeeeean if life is but a dream?

Well, indeed. And good luck with finding simple answers. Just watch out for those who claim to have them: the owls are not what they seem.

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